


now we're here, now is fine

by twelvenervouscats (crazybeagle)



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Established Relationship, Families of Choice, First Kiss, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, M/M, More tags to be added, Natsume Takashi's Terrible Childhood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2019-10-13 09:41:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17485763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazybeagle/pseuds/twelvenervouscats
Summary: "Honestly. You’re both being morons and martyrs for no reason at all.”(A collection of various prompt fills from tumblr. First: an I-almost-lost-you kiss. Second: a first kiss. Third: families of choice. Fourth: final fantasy xv au.)





	1. Chapter 1

“Wake up.”

The plea tumbles from Kaname’s lips and it’s soft but it feels manic. His hands are shaking where they hover above Natsume’s chest; he’s barely breathing and his pulse is thready but _he’s alive, he’s alive he’s alive he’s alive—_

Kaname’s afraid to touch, now; as much as every instinct is telling him to gather Natsume into his arms and never let go, he can’t tell if he’s injured. He doesn’t look it, mostly he just looks _cold_ ; the pallor of his face under the clear brightness of a winter moon, lips gone blue, and actual patches of frost spangled across his damp pajamas. But he’s so still, and there’s blackened blood under his nose, trailing halfway down his cheek on one side before it had dried, and Kaname thinks he might be sick.

“I need you to wake up.” His voice splinters halfway through, and he takes Natsume’s face in his hands, so carefully. “Please.” And god, his skin is a temperature that skin should never ever be. His thumbs trace the dark divots below his eyes. He wants to grab his shoulders, shake him, yell and scream until he opens his eyes and calmly tells Kaname the blatant and oft-repeated lie that everything is just fine here.

He can’t see Ponta, he’s not changed back to a visible form but he can feel the wall of warmth at his back. He turns towards that warmth, now, where he can make out a mass of translucent white right in front of his nose, and this close to it he can barely see the trees beyond.

“He won’t wake up,” Kaname says, and it sounds so obvious, childish.

Then, a part of that white mass moves in close just beside his shoulder, where he would more or less imagine Ponta’s head to be. A gust of air, warm and strong, passes over Kaname’s hands and ruffles Natsume’s hair.

He doesn’t stir.

Kaname hears a faint sound, almost like a deep _harrumph,_ before a white burst of smoke erupts around him. Then Ponta is there, a cat once more, just by Kaname’s knee. “No need to be so delicate,” he says, testily. “You won’t break him. He’s just sleeping. Could’ve picked a better place to do it.”

Kaname could’ve sobbed from relief. His hands shift down to Natsume’s shoulders. “What happened?”

Ponta scoffs. “That yuki-onna is what _happened_.”

“Where—”

“Gone, now, I’d say. And good riddance. Oi,” he adds, waddling up to the side of Natsume’s head and batting him on the nose. “Don’t nap here, moron. Let’s go already.”

Taking Ponta’s lead, Kaname shakes Natsume’s shoulders himself; tentatively, at first, then much harder, because Ponta’s right, he can’t stay out here any longer. But Natsume’s head just lolls back onto the underbrush, and Kaname bites the inside of his cheek. “Come on, come back,” he says, loud as he can through the panic still threatening to snuff out his voice altogether. “You can come sleep in my bed again, okay? It’s so cold out here.”

When that garners no response, Ponta’s eyes narrow. “This is taking too long.” Then, without warning and in a move that should’ve been altogether impossible, he spins right around and launches a sharp kick right at Natsume’s face, with enough force behind it to knock his whole head to one side.

“Don’t—”

But it’s only then Natsume’s eyelids flutter.

“Mnn…ow.”

The noise that escapes Kaname’s throat then _is_ very much like a sob. He cradles Natsume’s face between his hands once more and leans in close, chest constricting. Natsume’s own eyes are half-mast and dull, an uncomprehending gaze drifting over his surroundings and right over Kaname, not focusing on any one thing. That is, until Ponta wriggles in between him and Kaname, putting himself nose-to-nose with Natsume and glaring.

“Idiot,” he snaps. “This is what you get for _letting_ a snow demon possess you. You’re damned lucky Tanuma woke up in time to see you were gone or you’d have been long dead by morning.”

Natsume doesn’t seem to really register a word of that, but his eyes become a little bit clearer at the sound of Ponta’s biting tone. He squints a bit, frowns.

“Sensei…?” And, after a moment, gaze shifting upwards, “…Tanuma?”

Ponta ducks out of the way then, with a huff, and Kaname leans in close. “Yeah.” The single word feels like a burst of relief. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Natsume echoes, vaguely, giving Kaname a tiny smile.

After a moment, his forehead scrunches up, and beside him his fingers twitch in the dirt and shriveled leaves. “What—a-are we outside?”

Kaname just nods, tightly, not at all having it in him to elaborate if Natsume doesn’t remember.

“Oh…you’re crying.” And that vagueness in his voice and eyes is quickly replacing itself with distress when he takes in Kaname’s face.

Kaname just nods again, swallows hard; now is not the time for a breakdown, it’s _not_ , he can do that later when Natsume is warm and safe and not watching it happen.

“Well, of course he is,” Ponta mutters. “A minute ago he thought he just found your corpse.”

“…oh.” The realization in his wide eyes shifts to something more like horror, then shame. “Tanuma, I’m sor—”

But the words are lost because Kaname’s kissing him, then. It’s a fierce, desperate thing, faces mashed together, his fingers curling in Natsume’s hair like he’ll evaporate into the January night if Kaname can’t hold him tight enough, every muscle in his own body rigid with residual terror.

Natsume remains motionless beneath him, cold mouth perfectly still. It feels as though he’s holding his breath.

But it’s just enough like kissing some lifeless thing, that that thought alone is enough to send him reeling back.

When he looks down, though, Natsume’s just watching him, eyes clear and soft and very, very worried.

Kaname blows out a long breath before he can trust himself to speak. “Your lips are freezing,” he says, with a little chuckle that doesn’t at all sound right. “And god, there’s ice in your hair…” His fingers comb back Natsume’s fringe.

“I’m okay,” Natsume starts, and Ponta promptly snorts. “Ah. I mean,” he amends, softly, “I don’t feel cold. Just…sleepy, kind of.”

“ _No_ sleeping.” The words come out louder than he’d meant them to, sharp and frightened. “Not until we get you back and warmed up,” he adds, forcing a calmer tone. He bends down, quickly presses his lips to the frigid skin of Natsume’s forehead, then shrugs off his jacket to drape across Natsume’s chest.

When he looks again, some of the trepidation has bled out of Natsume’s eyes, replaced with something a little warmer, drowsier. Trusting.

Kaname cups his cheek, tries to ignore the tremble in his fingers. “Let’s go home.”

***

Natsume’s recollection of the incident, of how he’d ended up half frozen in the forest, comes back to him soon enough. Kaname makes him tell it, in order to keep him awake while he’s getting him into the tub to thaw him out.

The yuki-onna had come to him initially just a few days prior, just as school was ending and the New Year’s break began. She was lost, and very weak, and Ponta had dispassionately noted how odd it was for her to have not vanished altogether. She’d strayed so far south of the more common haunts of yuki-onna, where the winters were so mild and snow so rare. Natsume never found out why she’d come, she claimed to not quite recall, but she hadn’t come alone; her sister had been by her side. But the two had become separated, apparently, on a windy night. She’d been frantic, her sister was hardly stronger than she was, but she’d heard tell from a few of the local youkai that if she were in trouble, she ought to seek out Natsume-sama for help. Ponta hadn’t been especially fond of the idea, given the particular penchant of her whole kind for killing off humans in creative ways, and skeptical about the gaps in her memory—which needless to say had left Kaname nice and anxious, as well as Taki when she’d heard. But Ponta had conceded that she was clearly frail, just on the brink of fading away entirely if she couldn’t find someone or something to possess, and he genuinely hadn’t believed that she could do Natsume any real physical harm by simply hitching a ride in his body until her sister was found. She wouldn’t dare, when endangering him would be endangering herself.

And that had seemed to be the truth, at first. The New Year’s season had always necessitated a lot of travel for Dad, and with Natsume having planned to stay over most of the nights that Dad would be away, Kaname had had plenty of time to observe him, to make sure he was as fine as he claimed to be. But he’d looked to be perfectly well, not even a bit pale or fatigued or any of the general red flags Kaname had come to associate with youkai involvement. If anything, he was livelier and better-rested now that school was out and he was free to spend his days doing nothing of consequence, though he had confided that he was worried for the yuki-onna—he could barely sense her presence, he’d said, and most of the time she seemed to be asleep anyhow. Which was going to make tracking down her sister a tall order, if she couldn’t stay awake long enough to help at all, to tell them what they should even be looking for.

Up until tonight, of course. Kaname supposes in retrospect that he should’ve realized something was off when they’d settled in for bed, when he’d pulled Natsume close against his chest and frowned, realizing just how cool his skin felt all over. But Natsume waved it off when he asked, seeming for all the world to be perfectly content and sleepy, merely yawning and burrowing his face deeper against Kaname’s pajama shirt as Kaname tugged an extra blanket over them both.

When Kaname started awake, hours later, it was to a freezing room, an open window and an empty bed. And Ponta, clearly just arrived back from an evening of New Year’s revelry, asking just where the hell Natsume had gotten off to.

None of them are completely sure what changed, the coming-together of factors that finally allowed the yuki-onna to awaken, and to carry Natsume’s body away so deep into the forest that when he finally regained his senses he couldn’t find his way back again. Ponta’s best guess was that it was simply a matter of the temperature dropping in the night, enough for the ground to properly freeze for the first time in weeks. Enough to rouse the missing sister, to draw her out of wherever she had secluded herself to preserve her own strength, to start her back on her own search. And, as Natsume understood it from his own hazy recollection, she’d passed close enough by Kaname’s house in this search that her sister had sensed it, mustered what bit of energy she’d regained from resting within Natsume, and managed to well and truly take him over, enough to leave the house and give chase. The sister had fled, not realizing the possession and fearing that she was being pursued by an exorcist, until her limited strength failed her and Natsume’s body had caught up.

It was a happy ending, for the two of them, as far as Natsume knew, though admittedly they’d said little more to him than their thanks before vanishing into the night together. And in doing so, had left Natsume stranded and barefoot in his pajamas, in an unfamiliar part of the forest.

And to be fair, they wouldn’t necessarily have had any reason to _know_ he was unfamiliar with it, or that he couldn’t just go back the way he came—after all, when they’d found him he hadn’t been _that_ far away, he could only have gotten so far on foot. But Kaname doesn’t feel quite so forgiving on the matter, especially when Natsume told what happened next.

Because he’d scarcely begun to realize just how lost he was when he’d become drowsy, and dizzy. Not cold, he’d said; not really, and in no discernible pain, but after a few minutes he’d ended up on his hands and knees in the underbrush, his head reeling. And the next thing he’d known, Ponta was kicking him in the face.

At the very least, Kaname supposes he’s grateful that Natsume truly didn’t seem to feel the cold. Not until halfway through his bath, anyways, when the shivering set in, but by then he was well on his way to being a normal _human_ temperature once more. And that’s the other thing Kaname can’t quite forgive, that both yuki-onna had been so apparently blind to the fact that they’d nearly frozen him to death. Natsume for his part genuinely hadn’t noticed; he’d been surprised when Kaname pointed out the ice on his clothes and in his hair. And, as Ponta had (reasonably) pointed out, yuki-onna in general were not known for any dealings with a human that a human ever walked away from, so it was likely they had no idea the kind of unintentional damage they’d inflicted. But regardless, if Ponta had found him any later than he had, it unquestionably would’ve been too late.

He’s back in bed, now, bath finished, swaddled up in every extra blanket that Kaname could find. He had been very reluctant to leave the room even for the two or so minutes it took to locate said blankets, the fact that Ponta was literally sitting perched on top of Natsume’s chest when he’d left (and sending Kaname off with a longsuffering “just _go_ already, I won’t let him wander off again”) notwithstanding. He had tried not to visibly rush back to the bed when he returned, but the panic must’ve been a little too obvious in his eyes, because Natsume immediately tried to prop himself up on his elbows, giving him a smile that was surely meant to be reassuring but far too weary around the edges to be so. Kaname had just laid him back down, wordlessly, with a quick kiss to the forehead before he began situating the blankets. Ponta had given up his spot on Natsume’s chest in favor of settling down instead near his thigh.

“Okay,” he says, once he’s finished fussing with the bedding. “How cold are you?” Which might be an idiotic question, if Kaname’s lips on his skin just now were anything to go by, the answer is still _very_. But he’s learned by now, when asking after Natsume’s wellbeing, to phrase it so as not to allow him the out of merely saying he’s _fine_ when he obviously isn’t, otherwise he’d be claiming he was _just fine_ up to his dying breath.

And to Natsume’s credit, he does try to be more honest about it, nowadays, to Kaname, to their friends and to the Fujiwaras, though it’s so visibly difficult for him to try to relearn every instinct he has just to let on that he’s unwell.

“I’m…it’s not so bad anymore.” His voice is a little muffled; he’s buried up to the nose in soft fleece. “I don’t want to move, though.”

“You shouldn’t be moving around so much anyways, with your feet in that state,” Kaname says, mouth twisting. Natsume hadn’t really been aware of it until they’d gotten back, but taking off through the woods at top speed had torn up his skin pretty thoroughly, cuts and scratches up to the ankle that had bled in the bathwater, and the nail on one foot had been ripped clean off. Kaname had done what he could with a first aid kit, Natsume’s blood on his fingertips enough to set his stomach churning but knowing his aversion to hospital trips.

“Are you gonna just carry me everywhere, then?” Natsume’s voice is soft and sleepy.

“If you need me to,” he says, his returning smile sitting brittle on his lips, sliding his fingers through Natsume’s still-damp hair and wondering if he dried it well enough. “But it’d be better for you to just stay in bed.”

Natsume blinks up at him; he can’t seem to keep his eyes open all the way. “You know…I’m sorry about the circumstances, but it is pretty fun when you carry me.” An honest-to-god delirious giggle, then. “You’re strong.”

“I’m not that strong.” An easy counter. “You’re not that heavy.” He pauses, realizing he’d been hovering in an awkward half-crouch beside the bed that’s making his thighs ache, and sits on the edge of the mattress. Ponta shoots him a brief exasperated look, _make up your mind already_. “Do your feet hurt a lot? I can find you medicine if it’d help you sleep.”

“Mm…no, they’ll be alright…” he frowns a little, and Kaname feels a movement by his hip, and realizes that Natsume’s trying to work his hand free of the many blankets tucked tight around him. Kaname tugs them loose, only to have pale fingers catch his sleeve.

“Don’t you want to lie down?”

_No_ , Kaname thinks, and if he wasn’t sitting he’s pretty sure he’d be pacing. But there’s a quiet apprehension in Natsume’s words, so Kaname gives a constrained nod instead. “Let me just get the lights.”

It doesn’t actually help his nerves any, lying in the exact same position they’d fallen asleep in earlier that night; the chilly tip of Natsume’s nose brushing against his breastbone and Kaname’s arm draped over his shoulders. When the occasional shiver comes, he rubs Natsume’s back, and Kaname does appreciate that much, it means he can feel him breathing better. Natsume always seems to migrate into this same position; it means he’s comfortable and Kaname’s glad for that but he certainly can’t say the same. Even Ponta keeping a lookout only helps so much with that; every muscle and nerve in him feels like a taut rubber band twisted over and over on itself, acid churning in an empty stomach. He starts at every little sound, every slight creak of the aging house settling around them. There’s no real noise from outside; the night is still, no wind, no forest creatures making any sound this deep into the winter. Objectively that silence should be better; but it’s not, really, it just feels all the more ominous. Kaname’s wound so tightly, ears pricked for every sound, that all it takes is for Ponta to speak out of the blue to startle him so badly that it wakes Natsume back up.

“Calm down, brat.” He pokes at Kaname’s ankle with a single paw. “I was just going to say it’s actually safe for you to go to sleep, hard as that is for you to believe, apparently.”

“I know,” Kaname murmurs, watching Natsume’s forehead scrunch up as his awareness returns. “Sorry. I’m trying.”

“Are you, though?” Ponta drawls, and Kaname sends a tired glare in his general direction.

“Hm…mm?” Natsume frowns, eyes sliding slowly into focus, reflecting the light of the single lamp Kaname had left on beside the bed.

Kaname smooths back his hair with one hand. “It’s alright.” He tries to sound surer than he feels, on that point. “Go back to sleep.”

“What’s…” His frown deepens, both his hands sliding up to the sides of Kaname’s chest under the covers. “Your heart’s beating so fast.”

“That’s because been busy picturing all the different ways you could possibly prance off and die the second he takes his eyes off you,” Ponta says flatly, and Kaname winces.

“…Oh.” He lets out a slow breath. Then, looking resolute, he inches himself upward, wriggling out from under the mass of bedclothes piled on top of him until he’s nose-to-nose with Kaname, his cheek squashed against the pillow. He’s panting a little from the effort, gripping Kaname’s shirt with both hands, but his eyes are steady. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be.” Kaname reaches up, traces the pad of his thumb across Natsume’s cheekbone, the skin cool but no longer cold to the touch. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You were being kind, not reckless. You even talked to me about it first.” The significance of that had not been lost on Kaname, either, that Natsume had come to him with this before coming to a decision, even when all evidence pointed to it being a fairly benign situation to involve himself in. At the time Kaname thought his heart might just have grown too full to ever fit properly in his chest again. And yet here Natsume is now, trying to apologize for it. “We didn’t know this would happen,” Kaname adds, gently. He’s not certain he can _be_ reassuring when his pulse is still hammering away like it is under Natsume’s hands, when there’s a current of nausea beneath the tight smile he offers. But he can _try_ , because Natsume deserves as much.

But then it’s Natsume who’s taking Kaname’s face into his own hands, and closing the distance between their lips. It’s as tender as it is deliberate, Natsume cupping his face and holding him there, as if _Kaname’s_ the one that’s ephemeral, precious, who might slip away so easily. His lips are still rough and cracked from the cold, but his lashes tickle Kaname’s skin like moths’ wings.

“No, we didn’t know,” Natsume breathes, eventually, into the scant space between them. Their foreheads are pressed together still; his fingers have slid up and back into Kaname’s hair. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt you, too.” He pulls back a little, then, eyes searching. But Kaname doesn’t know what to say to that, so he stays quiet, his chest tight.

“Thank you,” Natsume says. “For finding me.”

_I didn’t find you,_ Kaname thinks, _Ponta found you._ But those words don’t come. What he says, instead, half-blurted, half-choked, is: “I love you.”

_…oh._

“Oh,” Natsume echoes, softly, eyes widening into twin moons in the lamplight, and Kaname fleetingly thinks of sinking through the mattress and vanishing then and there. That…he had not meant to say that, just now. But he can’t (won’t) take it back, either. He forces himself to meet Natsume’s eyes, hopes to god he says something more because Kaname’s words are utterly spent.

“You’ve never said that, before,” Natsume adds, at long last. He chuckles, the sound of it breathy and stilted. “I guess I should get lost in the woods more often, huh.”

But Kaname can only stare, tongue-tied, through eyes that have begun to sting. Natsume pauses, taking in Kaname’s face before his brows scrunch together in apparent distress. “I’m sorry, that was a cruel thing to say, wasn’t it.” Gentle thumbs brush below Kaname’s eyes, swiping away the building moisture. “Please don’t cry. I’m sorry.”

It’s too late for that, Kaname thinks with some distant degree of frustration at himself. Natsume should definitely, definitely be resting right now. Not dealing with Kaname’s apparent inability to get a handle on himself, or some ill-timed confession. But here they are, and now Kaname’s the one clinging onto Natsume’s pajamas like a terrified child, face buried deep in his shoulder and shaking. And Natsume’s rubbing his back, so gently, kissing his hair and whispering to him to _breathe, it’s alright, just breathe._

It’s ridiculous, really, that he can’t calm himself down until he’s practically cried himself inside out. His chest hurts, his head is buzzing and he’s soaked through the flannel on Natsume’s shoulder with tears and snot and spit—but the words _I thought you were dead, I saw you and I thought you were dead_ have been playing on some awful loop in his brain for the past two hours and it’s all he can do not to repeat them now—if he does he’ll just lose it again.

Once his breathing has evened out to a semi-reasonable pace, the warm weight near his ankle shifts a bit, and he hears a sardonic, “Are you finished?”

“ _Sensei_.” Natsume angles a slight kick in the cat’s general direction, but between Kaname’s own legs in the way and the swathes of bandages and blankets packed around them it doesn’t make it very far. “He does care,” Natsume mutters, and Kaname raises his head to see Natsume scowling at the foot of the bed. “He’s just being rude.”

“Of course I care.” Ponta blinks back at them, wholly unbothered. “He promised to make gratin tomorrow. He can’t do that if he’s cried himself to death, now can he.”

Natsume pointedly ignores that, before propping himself up on a trembling elbow just far enough to reach for the water bottle on Kaname’s dresser. “Here,” he says, his gentle smile incongruent with the way he almost drops the bottle between them. “You’ll get a headache.”

And Kaname can’t contest that, really. He can already feel the pressure mounting between his temples. He accepts it and winds up downing about half of it in two gulps. When he offers it back to Natsume to take his own drink he keeps his own hands over Natsume’s unsteady ones, but Kaname’s the one whose fingers have grown cold now.

“Better?” Natsume asks afterwards, voice still infinitely kind and patient but Kaname can practically see the fatigue etched into his face _._ Kaname just nods, sheepish. He should never have woken him.

“Um,” Natsume continues, less sure, “I’d ask if you wanted to talk about it right now, but…”

“N-no, thank you.” His voice comes out low and wrecked, and clearing his throat doesn’t make it any better. “You should rest.”

“Okay.” A pause, and Natsume gives him a long look, making no move to get settled back down under the covers just yet.

“What’s wrong?” Kaname asks, with some trepidation. Natsume’s eyes are wide, solemn but luminous.

“I love you too.”

…oh.

“Oh.” Kaname’s mouth feels very dry, suddenly. There’s a bubble of unbelievable warmth, of _hope_ , rising in his chest, but anxiety follows fast behind. Natsume’s face looks so _open_ right now, the kind of transparent expression that doesn’t often come easily for him and he’s waiting, waiting and Kaname has to _say something_ and—

“You don’t have to say it just ‘cause I said it,” is what comes out, eventually. His voice still sounds rather like he swallowed a toad, and he clears his throat in vain, gaze dropping to some spot on the rumpled coverlet between them. “You don’t owe it to me or anything. You might not even remember any of this in the morning, anyways.”

He raises his eyes again when he feels cool fingers light on his chin. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “It’s true, and you should know it.” Exhaustion notwithstanding, his voice is clear, and his eyes are so warm Kaname couldn’t look away again if he tried. “I love you, okay? I love you.”

Kaname just nods, he’s not sure if he wants to laugh or cry again or hyperventilate or possibly all three but then Natsume’s reaching for him and kissing him and kissing him, lips, forehead, eyelids, nose and cheeks, and Kaname doesn’t have to say anything at all. It’s all slow, feather-light and lingering; Natsume’s too tired for anything more but Kaname’s content to lie there and let himself be kissed, his mind resonating with it: _I love you too, I love you, I love you…_

“Sorry I scared you,” Natsume murmurs, eventually. His fingertips skim a lazy circle on Kaname’s shoulder, their noses nearly touching still. “I’ll do my best to not get lost again.”

“Not without me.”

Natsume’s lips twitch. “Okay. Not without you.”


	2. First Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Is this what you want?"  
> "Not if you don't."  
> (Prompt the second, a request for a "first kiss" fic.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for referenced homophobia and the inferred abuse that goes along with Natsume's Terrible Childhood.  
> Some allusions to chapters 97 and 98, "A Suspicious Visitor," the as-of-yet unscanlated Tanuma-centric story. Not necessary for understanding this fic, but you can read the summary over at @apta-scans' tumblr page!

“—said _,_ are you sure you’re okay?”

Takashi starts when fingers catch his wrist. “Huh? Oh.” He wheels around; Tanuma’s stopped walking but he hasn’t relinquished Takashi’s  arm. His forehead’s all pinched, in a way it only ever is when he’s deeply concerned, or else nursing a headache and trying not to let on, and Takashi doesn’t think it’s the latter.

“…sorry,” he manages, a beat or two later than he ought to have answered. “I’m fine, I’m. Trying not to get us lost.”

And that’s true, but it’s not _the_ truth, not by a longshot. He gives Tanuma a tight smile regardless, does his best not to shuffle his feet under the scrutiny.

Tanuma doesn’t buy that, of course he doesn’t, but the (only slightly tired) look he gives Takashi then is of one who has grown accustomed to picking their battles. “Alright,” is all he says. And, in a motion that from anyone else might be considered sly, he slides his hand down from Takashi’s wrist to lace their fingers together. The effect is almost ruined by the shy smile and the way he ducks his head, but he doesn’t let go of Takashi’s hand regardless.

Takashi’s heart does an odd, distressing little flip-flop in his chest. He doesn’t quite know if all of this is going to be easier than he thought, or harder.

And it’s not _that_ weird, he tells himself, as they start to walk again. They’ve held hands before. By now, he’s held the hands of all of his friends, with varying degrees of frequency—Nishimura in particular is an enthusiastic proponent of doing so at every opportunity. (With him, Takashi’s lucky when it’s just his hand; Nishimura’s more apt to cheerfully take his whole arm captive.) And there’s comfort in that kind of familiarity, a warmth that he’s still getting used to. But he’s pretty sure it’s not supposed to give a person dry mouth and a vicious case of sweaty palms. He tugs at Tanuma’s hand, to get him to follow when the route turns suddenly around a fallen tree half-enveloped in a thick emerald carpet of moss, wishing he could just shut off every part of his brain that isn’t currently being used for navigation. At this rate, he’s going to lose what little nerve he had to go through with this.

“How do you know which way to go?” Tanuma asks, a minute or so later. Takashi looks back to see him gazing at the expanse of gray and brown and green around them, the earth soft beneath their shoes and the fallen leaves, moss and fungi overtaking tree trunks and the occasional boulder. Light falls gentle and diffused through the leaves above, a wholly untouched swathe of forest. “You keep slowing down,” he continues, eyes now trained on the ground directly in front of them. “Is there some kind of path, or…?”

“Sort of,” Takashi says, leading him to a wide trunk some meters away. “There’s markers, painted on some of the trees…from one marker you can usually see the next one.” He raises his finger to trace the bark; patches of pale green lichen cling to the surface around, and a tiny jewel-bright beetle nearly scuttles right across his fingertip when he skims the edge of the pearlescent paint. “Sometimes they’re sort of hard to find, though, where they’ve faded.”

Tanuma leans in, squinting at the tree, his focus somewhere to the left of the mark. “Is this one faded?”

“Ah, not especially? There’s some that are a lot worse.”

Something dims, just a bit, behind Tanuma’s eyes at that. “Oh.” His gaze drops down to the underbrush.

“Ah, but—” Takashi lifts their still-joined hands, moves Tanuma’s fingers up onto the bark. “It’s like this. Here.” And, with one hand resting over Tanuma’s while the other comes up to take his wrist, Takashi moves his hand, guiding Tanuma’s fingertips over the looping, fluid strokes of the symbol. 

Tanuma stares at his own hand, wide-eyed. He seems to be holding his breath. He looks enraptured, Takashi thinks. By so small a thing, true, but to watch it gives Takashi a feeling as though there’s a live, panicked hummingbird struggling to escape the inside of his own stomach.

 “What’s it mean?” Tanuma’s voice is hushed. “I bet it’s beautiful to see.”

It takes Takashi an extra second to locate a voice to reply, and another to process the question itself. “It’s. Um. I don’t actually know?” Their fingers now rest interlocked over the symbol, his own a little shorter than Tanuma’s, nails dirty where he’d failed to scrub them well enough after days of sifting and picking his way through muddy stream banks. “I can’t read it,” he continues. “All the symbols the whole way look exactly the same, so maybe it’s the name of the stream. But I don’t know if anyone even knows the original name of the stream anymore, Sensei said all the youkai around here just call it the Ribbon Stream.”

“Ribbon Stream?” Tanuma’s still staring at the tree bark as though the symbol will reveal itself if he just looks long enough.

“Yeah. You’ll see when we get there, it gets really thin and branches off a lot into a bunch of tiny streams, and it all stands out really brightly where the light hits it, and where we’re headed is a little waterfall around the halfway point…it’s really nice there.” And Takashi hopes that, after today, it will _remain_ really nice in his mind, because he’s either about to create a very good new memory of this place, or a _really terrible one,_ depending how this goes. The prospect of it all has left him feeling shaky and vaguely nauseous since he woke up this morning-- it’s taking a lot more conscious deliberation and effort than it ought to, to keep himself here, slap a smile on his face and _not_ make some flimsy excuse to bolt before his own words can change anything ( _every_ thing) between them.

“I’m sure it is,” Tanuma says, finally letting his hand slide down from the tree, rubbing the back of his neck a bit. “Ah, sorry. I’m sure this here is just as ordinary as a street sign for youkai, isn’t it?” He takes a step back. “Right. Should we go, then?” A half-second’s hesitation, then he’s holding his hand out again.

“It’s…it really is okay.” Takashi takes his hand, thinking he ought to say something else but unsure of what else to say that wouldn’t just make Tanuma feel weird or inadequate. “But we can go. It’s this way.”

“So,” Tanuma asks as they walk, “you were coming to this place because you were looking for…what was it, a coin?”

“Ah, yeah.” Despite himself his lips twitch at the memory. “A five-yen, actually.”

“A…wait, what?”

Takashi tells him the story, then; it’s an apt distraction from his nerves and in truth it’d been a more or less pleasant diversion for the past week, in a beautiful place with nothing actively trying to eat him. The distraught youkai who’d sought him out, a diminutive bird-like creature who could fit comfortably in Takashi’s cupped palms, had dropped its “treasure” while attempting to cross the stream. At its deepest the water only really reached about a half-meter, if that, but it was enough to make Takashi nervous that the tiny creature would drown itself if it tried to search unaided. So he’d spent a few days after school out at the stream, the youkai perched on his shoulder while he waded through the water and picked through countless slippery algae-coated pebbles and twigs, Sensei off catching minnows or napping in a sunny spot on the banks. After three luckless days, the youkai was frantic, especially after an overnight storm which could feasibly have washed the coin much further downstream. So he’d sketched out more details of the “golden coin” they were to be looking for, using a stick in its beak onto the mud of the bank.

The second Sensei had recognized what they were looking at, absolute outrage flashed in his eyes, and Takashi had had to slap a hand over his mouth and smack him over the head to keep him from telling the youkai off for wasting their time. It had taken a great deal of cajoling and threatening to get Sensei to _keep_ his mouth shut, though Sensei could not for the life of him understand why Takashi didn’t just reach into his own damn pocket, produce two or three _precious treasures_ the youkai could keep and put an end to the whole tedious affair. And really, Takashi had found himself wondering the same thing, later that night when he was washing the mud out of his hair and guilty from having to hand his ruined uniform over to Touko-san after slipping and landing flat on his back in the muck of the bank.

“Did you end up finding it?” Tanuma asks. “Or did you just give him one of yours?” His fringe is starting to stick to his face from sweat; the recent rains had cooled the weather off a bit and they have a pleasant amount of shade at the moment under the trees, but the moisture had crept back into the air.

“I did, eventually.” Takashi pushes his own dampening hair out of his face, thinking that if the circumstances were different, it might not be so bad to dip his feet in the cool water on a day like this. “I think the only reason I could is that the storm had shifted the pebbles around a little and stuck it in a place where the light was hitting it in the shallow water. But it was getting to the point where I was thinking I’d have to pretend I’d found it…I was just afraid the youkai would know that it wasn’t theirs.”

“How would it know?” Tanuma’s grinning a little, now. “Unless one was much older than the other?”

“I mean, maybe it wouldn’t, but. I don’t know, sometimes if you attach so much meaning to one thing, or one place or person, too, I guess…it can change it, somehow? In ways you maybe didn’t intend. I know youkai themselves can become powerful because people worship them as kami. It’s not like a five-yen would turn into a god, but. If it was really that important, I feel like the youkai might sense it if I was handing over a fake. And even if I told the truth, I guess it wouldn’t be the same, and. Cheapening it, in a way, if I said there were actually millions of its special treasure out there. That’s why I made Sensei keep his mouth shut.”

Takashi’s words peter out after that, and he feels a momentary flicker of self-consciousness at having just shared more information about all this than could possibly very interesting. It’s nerves, he thinks, that kept his mouth running. But one glance back at Tanuma’s face tells him he needn’t have worried; at the rapt attention in his eyes that’s always tempered by gentleness, it’s no different now than it ever is and it’s all for _him._ Right now it’s making him feel like he skipped a step going upstairs.

“Is that so?” Tanuma murmurs. “Well, in that case, I’m glad you found it. It was kind of you to help, it sounds like you put a lot of labor into it.”

“Ah, thanks,” Takashi says, but it sounds stilted. He shrugs. “I did more than Sensei did, at least. He napped the whole time.”

“Where is he, anyways?” Tanuma glances up at the treetops. “We’re getting pretty far from town, is it okay for him to not be here?” He’s eyeing the nearest tree trunks, now, in a way Takashi isn’t sure he likes, as though something could leap out at them any second, and that he’d undoubtedly place himself between that _something_ and Takashi. Takashi finds himself squeezing Tanuma’s fingers a bit tighter, then, as if that, absurdly, would keep him from hurling himself into some hypothetical peril on Takashi’s behalf.

“He’s nearby,” Takashi says, quickly. “He’s just gotten kind of bored of the stream by now, I think. He might show up later, once he wants a snack or something.” It’s doubtful that he will, when he’s made it absolutely clear he’d rather be anywhere in the world than privy to some embarrassing teenage confession.

Which is hypocritical, Takashi thinks, considering that Sensei was really the one who had goaded him into arranging this in the first place. Not that he _wants_ Sensei there for it, but the point still stands. _Honestly,_ he’d said, _you’re both being morons and martyrs for no reason at all. Even if it_ does _all go to hell for some reason, even that’s got to be better than all this insufferable pining, even I’m suffering by association just being forced to watch it day in and day out. It’s damn near enough to make me lose my appetite. If YOU don’t get the guts say something, I’ve a mind to, just to put an end to it._

And the thing is, Takashi can’t say that Sensei _wouldn’t_ make good on that threat, and really that’s the only way he can think of this going that would be _worse_ than any way he can possible imagine screwing this up himself. And so, here he is, dragging Tanuma by the hand into the middle of absolute nowhere while his stomach roils and his chest won’t pull in quite enough air, under no illusion that he’ll be able to convince he Tanuma he’s any semblance of _fine_ for much longer.

But the physical distance between them and any other human being is, at least, something Takashi can’t deny being glad of. Today of all days he’s been trying to push it out of his mind, but of course actively trying _not_ to consciously remember it is only making it creep back in all the faster. An afternoon when he was twelve, right before a school break, behind the overgrown bushes at the bus stop. Takashi wasn’t even sure of the boy’s name— Ishida, or Ishigami, he thought it was one of the two—taller than him, with freckles and nervous eyes that wouldn’t quite meet his own when he’d pulled Takashi aside after class and asked him to follow. In the end, sheer confusion as to what this could possibly be about had won out over the learned suspicion that would have kept him from humoring such a request. He hadn’t been at this particular school all that long, but it’d been long enough that he was more or less left alone by the other students; even those who’d been inclined to pick on him at the start had grown bored of it by now.  To this day, Takashi still isn’t sure if the confession from this classmate he’d never before spoken a word to was genuine, or if it’d been some prank that he was anxious to be following through with. But it hadn’t mattered; Takashi thinks he got less than three seconds to just stand there in utterly dumbfounded silence, the other boy still holding both his hands, before it was brought to an abrupt end. It was a somber-faced student in a high school uniform, with the same height and freckles who could only have been his classmate’s older brother, and who had apparently seen enough. He never said a word, just hauled the boy away from Takashi by the arm, and before he left fixed Takashi with a stare so cold it took his breath away.

Takashi had more or less been successful at putting the whole incident out of his mind in the days and weeks that followed; a cold glare in itself wasn’t exactly a novelty, even if the exact reason for it this time was not something he’d personally dealt with before. And beyond that, the family he’d been staying with at the time had definitely not been among the better ones, which really spared him no time or energy to wonder or worry too much about it in the face of his more immediate daily concerns. And being glared at by a stranger for a few seconds over something that had been a total misunderstanding anyhow didn’t really hold a candle to figuring out how to hide an empty bento from the lunch duty teacher, or what to do about a gym uniform that didn’t cover up a few stray bruises the way he’d hoped.

And it pales in comparison to all that, it _does_ , but still. He’d see those eyes again, sometimes, in his dreams; full of ice and vitriol he can’t understand, rooting him to the spot. He wishes he’d stop thinking of them now.

Takashi knows he’d never be on the receiving end of such a look from any of his own friends; knows because of every exchange with them that’s led to this moment. From Nishimura’s ribbing, the eye-rolls and the good-natured but put-upon outburst of “Oh my _god_ , can you guys just _kiss_ already and get it out of your systems, it’s killing me.” That was just last week at lunch, and Takashi is so, so glad that Nishimura had at least waited until Tanuma was _just_ out of earshot on his way back to his own classroom to fetch something he’d forgotten. Because Takashi had proceeded to quite literally spit his tea out onto the desk, even as Kitamoto cuffed Nishimura on the back of the head for it.

When Taki had said her piece on the matter, it was seemingly apropos of nothing as well, though the three of them had spent the afternoon together. It was an occasion much like today, actually, a show-and-tell of sorts at the ruins of a shrine long-since burned down. Takashi had stumbled upon it while returning a name, but it had been so _odd,_ and fundamentally nerve-wracking, to have Tanuma and Taki follow him back to a place where he had come very, _very_ close to getting eaten. (The youkai in question, in this case the guardian of this place and half out of its mind with its own defunct status, had still been tied to the spot somehow by the loss of its name to Reiko, and bent on revenge until Takashi had managed to evade its uncannily large mouth long enough to give the name back and free it.) Now the spot truly _was_ abandoned, peaceful and objectively beautiful with its many statues and little cemetery, so there was no good reason for Takashi to have been braced for something to leap out from behind every stone and tree and attack the people that he had knowingly brought here.

Taki hadn’t quite seemed to register his mounting anxiety at the time; she had, after all, been absorbed in the task she’d set for herself, the very reason she’d asked Takashi to take her here. She was making notes and sketches, her own general record of the place to cross-check with a reference she thought she remembered from some of her grandfather’s notes, after Takashi had mentioned in passing that he’d found the place.

Tanuma, though, _had_ taken notice of his frazzled nerves, and pretty quickly. He’d grabbed Takashi’s hand, then, and suggested that while Taki was working, they could tidy up some of the graves together. Takashi hadn’t realized how grateful he’d been for the distraction until almost after the fact, after an afternoon spent with the busywork of pulling weeds and scraping moss and rearranging stones, hunting down snatches of wildflowers to lay on each grave. And that day, Tanuma’s hand covering his hadn’t been strange at all, it had been grounding; a thing so simple yet so inexplicably effective at helping him to recall the basic mechanics of breathing.

So maybe Taki _had_ noticed, more than she’d seemed to despite her intense concentration and the way her pen had flown across the pages. Or, at least she’d noticed their hands.

Takashi still thinks she could’ve picked a better place to state her opinion than beside the ice cream freezer at the combini, with a handful of strangers nearby, for all that her intentions were good.

But it seemed as though she’d been holding herself back, for longer than she could possibly stand anymore, when she finally and abruptly told him, “I think Nishimura’s right, you know. To a point,” she’d amended, when Takashi only stared. “Just. I think it’s okay for you to trust him, with this. And I think…I think he really wants you to.”

In the end, Takashi had left the store without a single thing he’d gone in for.

 _Trust._ That’s a funny word, really.

Trust him with _what_ , exactly? With the stomachaches and the clammy palms of some dumb infatuation that probably wasn’t even _fair_ to have developed for the very first person who’d known the truth, and tried to understand? And some thanks Takashi had already given him, really, for that understanding, for the care and kindness with which he’d treated that secret. To shove him away so thoroughly that, after the whole mess with Misuzu and Sasame, Tanuma would say so matter-of-factly, like it was a truth as sure as the sun hanging in the sky, that his own troubles weren’t even worth Takashi’s time if they weren’t unquestionably youkai-related. Takashi’s scarcely begun to make _that_ up to him, really.

And now _this._

He’d wanted to wait, watch for an indication that this harrowing, inextricable tangle of emotion and nausea might be mutual. He couldn’t put Tanuma through it otherwise, he’s too far considerate a person to be saddled with something like that.

The problem is, Takashi still doesn’t know what he was supposed to have been watching for. He’d tried; made a deliberate effort, recounting stories of some of the more benign youkai he’d met—nothing involving the Book, and nothing that’d make Tanuma too anxious to hear about after the fact. He’d then taken him to some of those places he’d mentioned, even—pretty spots; a meadow, a maple grove, a sacred stone, places where nothing horribly dangerous had transpired. (The day at the shrine had been an outlier— _Just means you have a shred or two of common sense after all,_ Sensei had noted, in a bored voice, _not loving the idea of parading your friends around someplace where you came irritatingly close to getting gobbled up._ ) Sometimes Taki came along, sometimes she didn’t, but that genuinely didn’t seem to alter Tanuma’s mood or behavior much. Either way, he was just as quietly captivated by everything Takashi showed him, looking between Takashi and each new place or thing with some kind of reverence, as though Takashi had created it all with his own two hands. And those looks never fail to do a number on him, all his insides feel kaleidoscopic and strange but he finds himself smiling nonetheless.

As to the other, comparatively more average things to watch for…he’s still not sure, he doesn’t really have a frame of reference for _normal_ demonstrations of affection between friends. Nishimura is the physically clingiest person he knows—in the best of ways, though it took him a bit of time to get used to being tackled into a hug, or to have his arm latched onto out of the blue in a very public place. And Kitamoto just proceeds as though that’s perfectly normal—and for him, it must be, growing up joined at the hip with a person so wonderfully warm and free with their affections. Tanuma, needless to say, is shyer, so much more tentative when he reaches for Takashi’s hand. But he _does_ reach. And when Takashi can tamp down his own nerves and his mind turning over and over the implications until he’s dizzy from it, it’s…it feels _right_ , really. A kind of gravitation, effortless. It’s not been a great many occasions, but each had been significant, to Takashi at least. Their fingers tangled loosely walking home from school on a shaded, empty stretch of gravel road, Tanuma telling him about the science test he forgot to study for, about how he’s going to help his dad plant lavender in the flowerbeds beside the house in the autumn, voice soft and soothing and a little diffident as though he can’t quite grasp how any of these commonplace anecdotes could hold much interest for Takashi. Some weeks later, on a school trip to the aquarium; the stuffy, darkened room packed with the press of far too many bodies, Takashi’s hand sliding over Tanuma’s and squeezing tight as they’re shuffled and shunted forward towards the wall of water and glass. Takashi didn’t especially love the crowd, but Tanuma had looked like he might faint then and there. How he leaned on Takashi’s arm the whole way back to the bus, swaying with every step, and finally dozed off against his shoulder. And two weeks ago, at lunch, a frown and a cool touch to Takashi’s forehead when he’d showed up dead on his feet and teetering on just this side of a fever, a result of having been out all night the evening before. How he’d led Takashi to the nurse’s office with a press to the small of his back. How Takashi fell asleep under stiff white sheets with a steady palm resting against his own.

He glances down at their joined hands, now, struck by a sudden, absurd urge to laugh. _Gravitation._ Is it really that simple? He thinks of Tanuma, white as a sheet lying in a heap on the floor of the Omibashira house. He thinks of cold, cold eyes, in the musty corners of his dreams.

And oh _god,_ what does he even think he’s _doing_ right now.  

He’s out of time, though, to work himself up any further, because within minutes the trees give way and they’ve arrived. Behind him, Takashi hears Tanuma’s breath catch.

It’s just the same as he left it, though the banks are still muddy from the most recent rainfall of the morning before. It’s wide and shallow, the pale gray and tan of the pebbles turning to brown and green where the clear water flows over them. The afternoon sun is much stronger here, sparkling on the surface of it all and landing with an extra glint on the backs of the minnows darting around throughout. But by far the most spectacular, still some ten or so meters away from where they stand, is the waterfall. It’s not massive, not more than twice Takashi’s height, but the water branches off into literally one hundred or more tiny rivulets, flowing around the jagged face of the rock. Each one is like a thread of pure silver where the sunlight catches it, and Takashi had thought when he’d seen it first that the overall effect of it was less like ribbon and more like spider’s silk stretched across the rock, or delicate lace, but the name was fittingly evocative nonetheless. All around the falls, ferns sprouted in lush bunches, algae and moss clinging in the crevices and to the surrounding tumble of boulders.

As relatively familiar a landmark as this seemed to be to the local youkai, especially right here at its namesake focal point, it feels just a bit odd to Takashi that he and Tanuma appear to be alone, at the moment. Takashi had seen a handful of youkai since he’d started coming here, at least a few each day, though most were of the weaker variety and were content to keep their distance from a human walking comfortably alongside an ayakashi. To most who didn’t know of Takashi, or of Sensei, the usual (and perfectly reasonable) assumption was that he was an exorcist. Save for a few bolder ones, who griped about the commotion that Takashi and the little bird youkai were making by upending every pebble and twig in the place during their search:  Sensei had chased them off with glee before they could make any outright threats. Today, though, it’s totally deserted, quiet save for the sound of falling water, or the occasional hum of a lazy insect skimming the stream surface, and Takashi knows why.

  _Just get it over with,_ Sensei had grumbled. _I’m sure as hell not sticking around for it, but nobody’ll bother you while you’re at it._

“Wow,” Tanuma whispers, as though this is the sort of place where one ought to keep a reverent hush. “This is…um. Wow. You found a coin in this?” He looks as though he wants to get closer, but uncertain if he ought to, so Takashi leads him to the stream’s edge, the water lapping up onto the pebbles a hair’s breadth from the toes of their tennis shoes.

“I almost wish I’d brought a camera,” he says, still all wide-eyed wonder. “I’ll tell Taki she’ll want to bring hers when she comes.”

Takashi had asked Taki if she’d like to come along today, and her insistence she’d have to come another day due to needing to study for a history test had felt like an intentional opt-out (though she’d been clear that she’d very much like to be shown later). Takashi had felt only _faintly_ betrayed that Taki had effectively given Tanuma and him the afternoon to themselves, while Sensei had merely sniggered, _see? No excuses now._

“Is there anything here, right now?” Very gingerly, as though he’s disrupting something important, he dips the tip of his sneaker into the water’s surface, setting a few minnows to fleeing.

“Ah. No,” is all Takashi says, and Tanuma peers over at him, then. He frowns.

“Let’s sit down? You don’t look so good.”

“I’m f—“ Takashi starts, but Tanuma’s brows shoot up. “…sure,” he relents, and lets Tanuma steer him away from the water.

Tanuma chooses a large rock nearby, mostly flat, but a little damp and with some patches of crumbly lichen growth, and as they sit Takashi thinks fleetingly that he was glad he’d told Tanuma to wear a set of clothes he didn’t care too much about.

“Here.” Tanuma reaches into his bag and producing his water bottle. Takashi merely accepts it, taking a long drink and hoping his mouth will stop feeling like it’s stuffed full of wadded-up cotton.

“I’m sorry,” Tanuma says, and tucks the bottle away. “We could’ve turned around. You didn’t need to come all the way out here for my sake if you’re feeling badly.” Then, quite suddenly and without an ounce of hesitation, his hand finds Takashi’s forehead, palm sliding up under his fringe. His mouth twists a little, like he’s deliberating, before he raises his other hand to his own forehead. “It’s harder to tell with the warm weather.” He drops his hand, and even though it’d made Takashi’s pulse stammer to a concerning degree, he finds himself missing the contact.  

“I’m.” Takashi gulps past the lingering feeling like sawdust in his throat; the water hadn’t helped much. “I really am okay.” _Though I might not be in a minute._

“Really? Because you kind of look like you did that day you got that stomach bug when we were at the park and you went and lost your lunch in the bushes.”

“I’m not going to lose my lunch,” he says, and takes a deep breath as though willing that to be true. Honestly, nerves had rendered him unable to eat much lunch in the first place. “Just, ah. Thinking.”

And _that_ wasn’t the right thing to say, that’d only invite questions he’s not sure he can answer, wouldn’t it. And sure enough, worry of a very different sort alights in Tanuma’s eyes. “What’s the matter?” He’s all but forgotten the waterfall, now, Takashi thinks with a twinge of guilt; the whole supposed purpose of this excursion. “Is it—“ he falters a bit. “Is it something you needed to ask me about?”

Takashi opens his mouth, closes it again. Finally says, in a voice that comes out too small, “I don’t know.” And that _is_ the truth.

And it’s got to be frustrating for Tanuma, to be giving him nothing to work with here. But he’s so kind (always, always kind), infinitely patient when he says, “Okay.” There’s something fleeting and sad in his eyes, though, when he leans in, places a light hand on Takashi’s knee. “You know you don’t have to say, but. If I can help, just tell me what to do.”

And…Takashi should say something to that, he really should. But his heart’s hurling itself against his ribcage, and he can barely hear the falling water now over the roaring in his ears; it’s a marvel he could hear Tanuma in the first place.

“Natsume?”

Hands on his upper arms, now, bracing him. And then…

It lasts two seconds, if even that, and he’s not fully aware what he’s done until he’s in the midst of it. But their noses are touching, suddenly, and Takashi can feel the tips of Tanuma’s teeth through still-parted lips on his own mouth. The instant his brain catches up with him, he jerks back, head reeling.

_Oh._

_Oh, no._

_“_ I’m sorry,” Takashi blurts. His fingers come up seemingly of their own accord to hover near lips now tingling like they’ve been static shocked. And throwing up might be a distinct possibility, now. He can’t bring himself to look at Tanuma.

But Tanuma stays quiet. Could’ve been thirty seconds, or three hours, Takashi wouldn’t know, but for long enough that eventually Takashi does force himself to look.

…and Tanuma’s _staring,_ jaw slack and stunned, like he’s just been slapped in the face.

And _oh, that’s. Very bad._

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, quickly, and seriously, what on _earth_ had possessed him to do _that._ Some backhanded urge to just get it over with, for better or worse? Doesn’t matter now. “That was…was out of line, I take it back, just…” His voice peters out when, to his alarm, tears begin to well up in Tanuma’s eyes.

“H-hey,” Takashi says, and his hands twitch a bit, wanting to reach towards him, but not sure he ought to. “Don’t cry, I shouldn’t have done that…please don’t cry, okay?” It feels like he’s babbling, now.

When Tanuma does find his voice, it’s thick, a little hard to hear. “You…take it back?”

The _yes_ is on the tip of Takashi’s tongue, anything to get Tanuma to stop making that face. But, well. The damage is done, isn’t it. Some knee-jerk untruth won’t change that. “I…no.”

“Oh.” A long pause, near-deafening. A tear or two has strayed down his cheek by now, and it makes Takashi ache to see it. But there’s something like hope in his eyes, tentative and undemanding. Then, very softly, “Is this what you want?”

…what _you_ want. Honestly.

“Not if you don’t.”

“…I see.” He lets out a long breath, like he’s steeling himself. Then, slowly, so slowly as if giving Takashi every opportunity to pull away, he leans in, and his lips brush Takashi’s cheek. Just…lightly, just for a moment. “That’s good,” he murmurs, and in the half-second before he pulls away, Takashi can feel wet eyelashes on his skin, his own breath sticking in his throat. It's a miracle he hasn't pitched sideways right off the rock.

When Tanuma pulls away, leaving Takashi with his mouth hanging wide open like a fish, there’s a flash of uncertainty in his eyes, that shifts into something imploring. “You’re not…doing this just because you think it’s what I want, right? You’re not—“ he pauses, and frowns, apparently casting about for the right words. “You seemed really stressed out about it, so…I mean, if you don’t…” His gaze is unfaltering, as though he needs Takashi to understand this, but if also looks as though each word is costing him.

“I do,” Takashi says, quickly, before Tanuma can apparently convince himself otherwise. Tanuma blinks, but doesn’t interrupt. “I do,” Takashi continues. “I was just worried you didn’t.”

“…oh.” Tanuma’s smile is slow-breaking, a little wobbly at first, but then unfurling into something so luminous and extraordinary that Takashi can only stare. “Maybe we were both kind of stupid, then?”  

Takashi just nods. Honestly, now that it’s done with, he feels a little like his spine and all his limbs have turned to putty. He’s not sure if it’s from relief or the anticipation of whatever on earth is supposed to happen _now;_ he honestly hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“Ah…you’re blushing.” It’s not a derisive observation; if anything, he sounds slightly awed. “Did I do that?” He starts to reach towards Takashi’s face, hand hovering for an extra second in the air between them before his fingertips skim along Takashi’s cheekbone.

“Mm,” is all Takashi says, staring pointedly at his shoes now, heat only rushing into his face anew. A hand covering his own finally makes him look up.

“It’s okay. At least you didn’t cry.” He swipes at the remaining moisture in his eyes with the thumb of his free hand, with a sheepish grin. “Sorry. You must’ve really thought I hated it, huh?”

“Well…I did kind of kiss your teeth,” Takashi says, and promptly winces, because oh _god,_ _I really did kiss your teeth, didn’t I._

Tanuma shrugs. “That’s okay. I should’ve closed my mouth.” Then, with voice less sure but eyes gently enlivened, “…try again?”

***

The shadows have grown longer now, the light catching the falls in a way it hadn’t before, glowing more gold than silver and casting flecks of illumination across the pool below. They’re seated on the ground, the rock now against their backs, Takashi’s head having migrated to Tanuma’s shoulder.

“You know this won’t be easy,” Takashi murmurs, not sure which of them he’s even addressing. There’s the obvious, very literal ayakashi dangers, ones that Takashi’s already lost sleep over long before now. But as to the less fantastical, all-too-human difficulties… Takashi is accustomed to faces that hold no kindness for him, by now. But the thought of anyone turning those same hard eyes towards Tanuma makes Takashi’s stomach churn. Adults. Adults, especially. _That_ , Takashi has avoided thinking about; it’s beyond him, just because he can’t quite imagine those horrible eyes in the faces of any grown person that truly matters to him or to Tanuma, he can’t bear to find out.

“I know. I don’t really care.” The answer is immediate, calm, and god if it doesn’t make Takashi nervous. “It’s worth it.”

_It’s worth it._

You’re _worth it._

_God, I hope I’m worth it._

“It really is incredible,” Tanuma says, after a moment. Takashi glances up to find him staring out at the glittering threads of the waterfall. “We’ll need to come back when we’ll be less, um. Distracted.”

“…sorry.”

“Don’t be. You picked a pretty spot, you know…like a movie or an old novel, so. Good job.”

Takashi grimaces. A good spot for what, the world’s most panicked pseudo-confession? A half-hour’s worth of sloppy, unwieldy kisses between two people who had no clue what they were doing? (That last part he doesn’t regret, in the slightest, he’s still reeling from it, still feels giddy and dizzy and _light_ , happier than he’s been in weeks. And Tanuma had looked so brilliantly, blindingly _happy_ , in a way Takashi doesn’t think he’s ever seen, a soft smile playing on his lips even now.)

But apparently, teasing is still on the table. Even if he doesn’t intend it that way; it honestly sounds like he means it and that’s almost worse. Takashi huffs and plants his face squarely against Tanuma’s arm. Tanuma chuckles, and rests his chin on top of Takashi’s head, the arm already draped over Takashi’s shoulders tucking him tighter against his side.

“Should we be getting back?” Tanuma asks, after a moment.

 _No,_ Takashi thinks, promptly, childishly. _Never, ever._

But they need to leave if they don’t want to get caught in the dark—not likely, with an hour or two until the sun sets, but still  possible if Takashi takes a wrong turn going back. Takashi had seen very, very few ayakashi on the way here, and certainly nothing that bothered them; a family of little mouse-shaped spirits that fled when they’d passed, and child-sized youkai packing acorns into a basket that hadn’t even seemed to notice them. He suspects that Sensei had ensured in advance that they wouldn’t be bothered by anything along their route, but that’d be tougher to manage at night.

“Yeah,” he mumbles into Tanuma’s shirt, and it comes out sulkier than he means it to. With utmost reluctance he starts to pull his face away so they can get up. “If it gets too dark Sensei can just fly us—“ But he feels the light brush of lips against his forehead, then, and his words stop as abruptly as though they’ve plucked out of the air. The instant heat surging into his cheeks at that leaves him a little incredulous. Because honestly, out of every botched makeout attempt the both of them had just made—including but not limited to bumping noses (hard), kissing one another’s teeth not once but _twice_ more, and an objectively disgusting amount of spit all around—how is _this_ even making him blush.

But Tanuma’s eyes are lit with wonder and tenderness, looking down at Takashi now. The afternoon light’s caught his hair, turning it glossy, a sweet upward quirk of bitten lips when he says, “Ah. Sorry.” To his credit, he flushes a bit in turn when he takes in Takashi’s still gobsmacked face.

 _You’re not that sorry,_ Takashi thinks, knees wobbling when Tanuma pulls him to his feet. He takes his own chance, then, and leans in to catch the corner of Tanuma’s lips with his own—it’s quick, hardly a peck, but at least now they’re both red in the face.

They linger there, hands clasped loosely between them, and when Tanuma looks back out over the gold-washed water, it’s clear that Takashi’s not the only one reluctant to leave.

Takashi squeezes his hands. “We’ll come back?”

Tanuma’s eyes are impossibly bright, now. “ _Please.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come yell at me on tumblr @owletstarlet! I am always happy to take a prompt--


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for Natsume's Horrible Childhood on this one and all it entails. The request was for the Fujiwaras to tell off some of Natsume's past guardians and I couldn't pass that up--

Shigeru’s never been so naïve as to believe that he would never have a confrontation with some of his more…unsavory…relatives, about Takashi. In a way, he could’ve said he was looking forward to it, giving any of them a piece of his mind. _Many_ pieces of his mind, in fact. For how they could treat _any_ child in such a way, but for a child as gentle as Takashi, who so plainly aches for warmth, but is just plainly convinced he doesn’t quite deserve it.

Shigeru knows, objectively, that not every one of his relatives that took Takashi in was a complete scoundrel and monster, he does know that, but. Those homes weren’t _homes_ , not for Takashi at least. Shigeru doesn’t need to know the specifics, it’s in the way Takashi carries himself; in the very set of his shoulders. Nobody’s ever wanted him, and nobody’s ever made it a secret that they _didn’t._

And that? That makes Shigeru _burn._

What he wasn’t quite prepared for, however, was Takashi being with him when when such an encounter finally occurred.

They’ve gone into the city on a sunny weekend afternoon, just him and Takashi, with a mission from Touko to select a nice paint color for the kitchen from the hardware store. Really, there’s no good reason Touko couldn’t have come along herself, but her pointed insistence that she needed to stay behind because she had a big spaghetti dinner planned was all the indication Shigeru needed that she wanted him and Takashi to go spend some time together.

And Takashi had seemed excited about it, too, in his own quiet way. But he’d admitted once they were on the train that he was nervous about messing up Touko’s instructions to _choose something you think is nice, Takashi-kun_ , because he knew nothing about paints or decorating. And Shigeru could’ve told him the truth, then, that he and Touko were in solid agreement that whatever color appealed to Takashi the most was unquestionably the best option, but all that would achieve would be to make Takashi feel put on the spot. So he’d explained about choosing paint swatches, how they could bring back as many as they wanted to try, and how he had an idea of what sorts of colors Touko might enjoy (which Takashi would undoubtedly take under very serious consideration, bless him). By the time they’d arrived, Takashi looked to be full of determination rather than self-consciousness, and Shigeru had a feeling he’d be making a beeline for the sunny yellows and soft blues he’d suggested for Touko. Which is fine, provided he can coax Takashi to choose at least a single swatch or two on his own; in over a year of living with them, Takashi’s never even mentioned his favorite color (he’s never mentioned a lot of things, really), and Shigeru has to admit he’s curious.

“This is _huge_ ,” Takashi blurts, as soon as they’ve walked in the door. “Ah, just—“ he amends, going slightly pink around the ears, “I didn’t know there were hardware stores this big.”

“It is bigger than I remembered,” Shigeru agrees, pointing to a cheery yellow directory hanging over their heads. “It looks as though you can get clothes and toys, even. I don’t remember that from the last time.”

Takashi looks equal parts daunted and curious as he too eyes the sign. “Do they even _have_ paint? I don’t see it up there.”

“Let’s find out, shall we?”

It’s when he passes an aisle full of vacuum cleaners that Shigeru realizes that Takashi isn’t walking with him anymore. He glances back, only to find that he’s a couple meters away, rooted to the spot with the look of someone who’s just had a pitcher of ice-water thrown in their face.

“Takashi-kun?”

Shigeru turns back around, following Takashi’s transfixed stare straight ahead to the middle-aged couple currently examining a handheld vacuum, halfway down the aisle.

And…Shigeru knows them. Is related to them, though a bit distantly. He doesn’t call out to them, not when Takashi is wearing a face like _that_ at the sight of them. 

But the husband looks up before they can pass by unnoticed.

“Fujiwara-san?”

Shigeru inclines his head, gives a cordial smile despite his unease. “Ah, Akimoto-san.”

Akimoto Jiro is Shigeru’s cousin a couple times removed—not particularly close by blood, but he’s lived close by proximity for most of Shigeru’s life. An austere-looking man, thin and neatly-dressed with slate-gray hair. They only ever really encounter one another at weddings or funerals; and though he’s perfectly civil (if somewhat stiff), they never really became close, if for no other reason than the difference in their ages. When Shigeru was still in junior high school, Akimoto had already gone off to university; even now it would feel odd for Shigeru to address him by anything other than his family name.

“It’s been too long,” Akimoto’s saying now, but then his gaze shifts past Shigeru, and the geniality slips out of his expression, giving way into something frostier. “And…Natsume-kun as well?”

And behind him, Takashi flinches, actually _flinches_ before ducking his head and muttering a mechanical-sounding, “Yes, sir.” His gaze has dropped to the concrete beneath his sneakers; unwilling to meet Akimoto’s eyes.

And…oh, Shigeru does not care for this at all.

“Mm, I wasn’t aware you were staying with Fujiwara-san, now,” he says, with a frown.

“Yes, Takashi-kun’s been with us for a year or so now,” Shigeru says, smoothly, “and it’s a pleasure to have him.”

Akimoto’s wife—Mizuki, if Shigeru remembers correctly—still hasn’t spoken yet, but at these words her thin brows vanish beneath her fringe. She’s a petite, bespectacled woman, with a dour air, as though she’s got a capacity for kindness but hasn’t truly exercised it in quite some time. Her eyes certainly hold none for Takashi now.

“Is that so?” Akimoto sounds a touch dubious. “We had him for a time, too, you know. I don’t quite recall how long it’s been.”

“Five years.” Takashi’s voice is painfully soft, and he won’t look at any of them, but he seems all too aware that everyone’s looking at _him_ , holding himself very, very still. “Um, it’s. Been five years.”

“So it has,” Akimoto says, his own eyebrows shooting up to mirror his wife’s. “I trust by now that you’ve learned to respect the property of others, Natsume-kun?” There’s a hardness to his voice, now, the veneer of polite conversation wearing precariously thin.

Takashi doesn’t answer, this time. The focus of his eyes has gone wide, a bit glassy, and Shigeru feels as though he’s got a chunk of cold lead lodged in his own gut.

“So you haven’t learned, then?” Akimoto says, mildly. “Well, I certainly hope that’s not the reason why you’re here today.” He gestures vaguely at the shelves around him.

Takashi’s breath hitches, very slightly, but other than that he remains utterly silent. Shigeru can’t even see him breathing.

He’s _afraid_ of this man.

Something hot and sharp-toothed and ugly rises up in Shigeru’s chest, then. He stands up straighter, and takes an angled step forward that effectively places himself between his boy and his relative. “Not at all,” he says, astounded it comes out as cordial as it does, through a smile that sits tight and all wrong on his face. “We’re redecorating the kitchen, a bit. Takashi-kun is helping us choose the paint colors.”

“…I see.”

“Speaking of which,” he continues, and he can feel his own mounting hostility start to leak out of his grin and his words. “Takashi-kun, why don’t you go on ahead and start scoping out the choices. I’m sure it’d be boring for you to listen to two old cousins catching up.”

Takashi doesn’t run, not quite; but he’s gone from sight in seconds, head still ducked and hands jammed in his pockets. He’s distantly relieved that Takashi’s not physically close to these people anymore; there’s no feasible way that he’s alright, but Shigeru will have to see to that later. At the moment, he’s following them halfway into that aisle of vacuum cleaners, and all his insides are twisted up and seething and all he can think is that the Akimotos ought to count themselves lucky that it’s him and not Touko they encountered; they’d never be prepared for the onslaught.

But it’s Akimoto that speaks first, now, and he has the gall to look sympathetic. “You know you needn’t defend that boy just to save face, Fujiwara-san. We know very well what he’s like.” A shake of the head. “A proper amount of shame would only do him some good.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Shigeru says, through lips gone oddly numb.

“You ought to have him pay for it, at least.” It’s Mizuki speaking, now, for the first time in the conversation. Her voice is flat, mouth twisting at the corner. “He couldn’t, when it was our things he was smashing to bits, but he’s old enough to hold a part-time job now, isn’t he.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Shigeru replies, and it’s curt enough of a shutdown that Mizuki begins to look offended.

Akimoto, however, looks if anything even more sympathetic, though now it’s bordering on patronizing. “It won’t do to be taken in by him, you know. It’s always the same tale, more or less. We should have heeded the warnings, before we got him, but we thought we could set him straight. And in the end it only cost us.”

“Is there a story you think I ought to hear?” Shigeru asks, tersely. He has no idea why he’s inviting more information; from their tone you’d think they were talking about some unruly stray dog rather than a child, much more of it and Shigeru’s going to be about ready to break something himself. But refusing to hear it won’t mean Takashi will have lived through it any less.

“You’ve doubtless heard a hundred stories like it, by now,” Akimoto says, and something’s gone stony in his eyes now. “He seemed mild-mannered enough at first, you know, unobtrusive. Then we started finding the broken plates.”

“Plates?”

“That’s how it started out,” Mizuki replies, an edge to her voice like she’s got something to prove. “Plates first. Bowls and cups next. Always glass or porcelain, god knows why. An entire pitcher of tea once, and he just left the whole mess in the refrigerator for me to deal with. And a week later it was an antique teapot of mine, a gift from a friend and he snapped the spout off. It got so brazen he just stopped denying it after the first handful of times; we never caught him at it but he always left the pieces where we’d find them straightaway. Looking back, it’s a miracle he never shattered a window.”

“Did you ask him why?”

Mizuki looks nonplussed. It’s her husband who responds. “Has he ever told _you_ why, Shigeru-san? He seems every bit as shifty-eyed now as he did back then, though I’d hope for your sake that he would have improved by now.”

_That’s not an answer,_ Shigeru thinks. What he says, in a voice that manages to be much calmer than he feels, is, “I take it that matters didn’t improve?”

“That’s putting it mildly.” Mitsuki’s tone is biting, looking at her now it’s all but impossible for Shigeru to place that latent kindness he’d seen in her eyes before. “For my part, I did everything _to_ be done. No sweets, no television, no going out. Extra chores, early bedtime. All things that improve on a child’s character, you would think. Our Michiko never gave us such trouble. The problem there was, most of that must have not even seemed like a punishment to him. Not long before we had him, he’d been at that state home near here. And that’s all regimented, you know. Curfews, plain diets, no rotting your brain with television or games. And that builds character for _those_ children, I’m sure. But all it really did for _this_ child was make it so he didn’t know or care what he was missing, when we put those restrictions in place. So the behavior all just escalated from there, until Jiro-san had to be very firm with him.”

Shigeru feels his fist clench, involuntarily, at his side. _So there it is._

“So what made you finally send him away?” he asks, through his teeth.

Mitsuki’s jaw twitches. “He destroyed a family heirloom. We were having him stay in Michiko’s room, you know, she’d left for university the year before. And on her dresser there  was a doll, one I’d given her as a child. It was my grandmother’s, and it’d been in the family for nearly eighty years. Of course, the minute that boy started breaking things, the doll was the first thing that I hid away where I thought he couldn’t get at it. But not well enough, apparently. Jiro-san found him sitting on the living room floor one day with the doll in his hands. He’d torn its head and hands off, and smashed them.”  

“There was no teaching that boy an ounce of respect,” Akimoto says, as though it’s an immutable, if passingly irritating, truth of the universe. “We returned him to the state home, after that.”

“But not before you beat him.” The words are out before he can stop them (he does not care to stop them), low and packed with fury.

Akimoto’s eyes widen, minutely. He squares his shoulders. “I hardly see how that’s your affair, Fujiwara-san.”

When Shigeru takes a step forward, blood boiling, Mizuki actually draws back a little, closer to her husband, but Akimoto stands his ground. There’s disdain in the set of his mouth, the narrowing of his eyes.

“It certainly _is_ my affair,” Shigeru bites out, “because I’m his guardian, and he’s afraid of you.”

Akimoto stands up straighter, and glares. He’s not much taller than Shigeru, but clearly the intended effect is intimidate. But he doesn’t look intimidating, Shigeru thinks. He just looks _mean._ “Fujiwara-san, you forget yourself.”

“Do I?” Shigeru draws himself up, too; he may not look so intimidating but his whole body’s thrumming with anger, now. “I’d say the same for you, Akimoto-san, frightening my foster-child like that.”

“I did nothing that the situation did not warrant,” Akimoto says, coldly. “That doll was irreplaceable.”

“An _eleven-year-old child_ is _irreplaceable_ ,” Shigeru snaps, and it’s no small wonder, really, that he’s not yelling outright. Mizuki, as indignant as she looks, has begun glancing from Akimoto to Shigeru to past Shigeru’s shoulder down to the mouth of the aisle, as though checking that they aren’t in fact causing a scene.

Apparently, though, he _had_ gotten louder than he’d meant to, because then Akimoto says, eyes like granite, “You’d do well to keep your voice down, Fujiwara-san. You’ve already made it abundantly clear what you think.”

“What I _think_ is that you ought to be jailed,” Shigeru says, succinctly, voice not a bit quieter. “If any good came of it for Takashi, it’s that he was able to get out from under your roof. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”  


***  
  
When he finds Takashi, it’s in an aisle tucked away on the other side of the expansive store. And he’s not alone. Before Shigeru can call out to him, the second party is bounding towards him—an employee, a girl in a bright yellow smock and ponytail who can’t be older than twenty, a veritable bundle of anxious energy. “Oh, thank goodness,” she bursts, when she sees him looking over to where Takashi is hunched over on himself, head ducked, on a stepstool of industrial plastic.

“Are you his father?” The girl asks. She doesn’t wait for his answer. “Sorry, he’s—he’s doing better, now, and I gave him some water, but he looked like he was having some trouble breathing…? Do you have—does he need an inhaler, or…?”

Shigeru is fairly certain he knows the cause; he’s seen Takashi’s medical charts—anemia is listed, as well as far too many utterly unexplained childhood injuries. But no asthma, no serious allergies. Still, it bears  making sure.

From behind her, so quietly Shigeru barely hears it, comes an “…um.”

The employee wheels around, and in the space of a breath Shigeru has closed the distance between himself and the huddled figure of Takashi on the stool. He’s shaking, just a little, a fine tremor of the shoulders, and Shigeru’s first instinct is to lay a hand there. But he thinks better of it, after the people he’d just met, the story he’d just heard, reassurance isn’t going to come through touch. Takashi’s eyes flick upward, red-rimmed and wide, to take in Shigeru’s face, then back down towards the scuffed concrete just as quickly.

“Takashi-kun.” He says it low and gentle, and he doesn’t _want_ it to feel like he’s approaching an injured little bird, encroaching on its space and trying to exude calm long enough to extract it and get it to safety without panicking it right into an early grave. But of course the second he thinks of it, that’s _exactly_ what it feels like, and he hates it.

“W-was going to say I’ll pay for the water,” he says to his knees, his own voice a wavering, wispy thing.

The employee looks downright pained at that. “It’s—no, it’s on us, it’s alright.”

“Thank you for looking after him,” Shigeru tells her. “That was very kind of you.”

“It’s no trouble.” She looks back to Takashi. “Will you be alright?” she asks, uncertain.

“Yes.” Takashi’s answer is soft but immediate, maybe too much so, and he sits up a little straighter as if something’s being expected of him. “Thank you.” He meets her eyes for half a second, lips twitching in a pale mimicry of that vapid, diplomatic smile of his that he’s far too young to have cultivated.

It’s not until he’s watching her retreating back that that frail smile starts to slip. And when Shigeru takes a step closer, he goes very still. He’s still avoiding eye contact.

“Are you alright?” he asks, low and gentle. It’s a foolish question, to be sure. He still can’t quite shake the urge to place a hand on Takashi’s shoulder, confirm for his own sake the boy’s wellbeing. But the tension of his shoulders and the set of his mouth makes it look as though Takashi would crawl right out of his own skin and evaporate, if he could. “Were you having trouble breathing?” he continues, not wanting to press or draw undue attention to what was most likely a panic attack, but he needs to check that fact or their next stop will be the hospital.

“Yes. It’s okay now,” Takashi murmurs. He’s still got a thousand-yard stare trained at the scuffed gray floor. Something catches Shigeru’s eye, then, a muted silvery glint where Takashi’s hand lies on his knee. It’s a metal charm, he can see now, a keychain connected to the zipper of the bag Takashi wears around his waist. Shigeru hadn’t noticed it before, but then again the bag was usually half-covered by Takashi’s shirt and facing backwards. But now, with the bag half twisted round and resting against his hip, Takashi’s got the charm in his palm, running his thumb over and over in a subconscious circle across the textured surface.

“Is that new?” Shigeru asks, fishing for a distraction, and it takes Takashi a long moment to realize what he’s talking about.

“Oh. Um. Yes.” He opens his palm and angles the charm so Shigeru can get a clear look.

There’s no color to the thing, it’s cast in a frosty pewter but the shape of it is unmistakable nonetheless.

He smiles. “Ah, Himeji-jō?”  

“Mhm.” Takashi traces his thumb across the tiny rooftop. “Tanuma got to go with his dad on his work trip to Hyōgo when we had the long weekend last week. He brought me this.” And despite the situation, Takashi’s voice has gone just a bit soft and fond at the edges, gazing down at the charm, and Shigeru finds himself fiercely glad for it.

Incidentally, Takashi will be spending the day with Kaname tomorrow, to study  for a round of upcoming tests, but Shigeru finds himself conversely glad for the bit of delay between then and now. To be sure, Kaname’s presence alone has been so _good_ for Takashi, and even right now the thought of his friend is enough to help ground and soothe him. But Kaname’s so kind, so empathetic and attentive to Takashi that Shigeru knows that he’d worry, and this is a matter Shigeru suspects Takashi wouldn’t quite be able or willing to articulate to him, anyways. It’s for the best that he’ll get some time to decompress first, reorient himself, eat Touko’s spaghetti and drink some tea with Nyangoro purring away like a freight train in his lap, and then maybe he’ll actually be able to _enjoy_ his time with his friend.

“I went up to Himeji-jō back in junior high school,” Shigeru tells him, judiciously not mentioning that he’d been visiting some cousins who’d lived there at the time. He smiles. “Did Kaname-kun get to see the ghost in the well?”

There’s a flicker of… _some_ thing, then, in Takashi’s eyes. Something tense but distinctly removed from his current situation, his gaze fixed on the charm. “Ah…no,” he says, and it’s muted. “He didn’t go up to the castle. He got sort of sick that day. So he went to the gardens and sat down for awhile instead. He got some nice pictures of it from far away, though.”  

“I’m sure he did,” Shigeru says, affably. “Tell him I’d love to see them, the next time we have him for dinner.”

Takashi peers up at him through his fringe, and then, of all things, _disbelief_ steals through his features before he can school them back into that familiar flat politeness. “I’ll let him know.”

“I am sorry about the hold-up,” Shigeru tells him, when it’s clear Takashi has nothing more to say. “Although the Akimotos are not the best of company, I’m afraid.”

Takashi hasn’t dropped his carefully blank expression, but there’s a tightness, now, around his eyes. “You…talked.” The two syllables are just as tight, and he doesn’t elaborate.

“Unfortunately.” He’s surprised by the amount of contempt that bleeds into the single word, but he doesn’t bother holding it back. “Suffice it to say that when their daughter gets married next summer, they’re not going to be tripping over themselves to add me and Touko-san to the guest list. Nor should they.”

A pregnant pause. The look on Takashi’s face is hard to parse, but there’s some distinct fissures in that flat façade now.

“I’m sorry for causing trouble.”

“The trouble’s not you,” he says, emphatically. _Never you._

Takashi stares down at his hands again, at the charm still nestled in his palm. “Michiko-san’s actually pretty nice,” he murmurs. “I only met her once when she was on break from university…but she got me a new pencil case, and some milk soda. And she took me to the park.”

It speaks volumes about the life he’s led, Shigeru thinks, that he can easily enumerate such small throwaway acts of decency from years past and hold them dear.

“We’ll be sure to put a gift in the mail then,” he says, with a nod. “But I’m sure she of all people must understand that her parents aren’t the sort to appreciate the good things they’ve been given.”

_That_ does it, apparently. It’s enough to split that façade wide open and crumble it away. In its wake, it leaves round, stricken eyes, still red around the edges, lips smushed together to keep them from trembling. He looks like he can’t quite reconcile what he’s hearing now with what he knows of the world, and _god_ but he looks so very young. And so tired.

“Oh,” is all he says, and Shigeru barely hears it. But the word’s laden, as though he’s realized something. Shigeru hopes so. His thumb is still running over and over the textured surface of the keychain.

“Shall we get going, then?” Shigeru asks, smiling. “A city of this size, I’m sure there are plenty of hardware stores with…better patronage.”

“I…” Takashi opens his mouth, closes it again. Finally says, “The paints are right over there, though,” and points to a display a little further down the aisle.

“That they are,” Shigeru says, faintly surprised. He hadn’t noticed. “Impressed you could find them, don’t know that I could have on my own.”

“Didn’t really get to look, though,” he says softly, indicating the bottle of water still clutched half forgotten in his free hand.

Shigeru feels his own face do something odd, looking down at Takashi now. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to, Takashi-kun,” he says, slowly. “Certainly not on my account. You do know that, right?”

“I know that,” he says, the beginnings of a genuine smile pricking at the corners of his lips. “But I want to,” he adds, as though it’s _not_ the bravest thing Shigeru has ever heard.

“If you’re sure,” he finds himself saying, because really, he wants nothing more than to whisk Takashi far away from this place and those _people_. But what he himself wants is not at issue here.

“Yes,” he says, finally standing up from the stool. “I, um. I do like it here. I like the way it smells.”

“The way it smells?”

Takashi flushes, then, as though realizing he’s said something too peculiar. “…yes,” he says, sounding much less sure, like he’s reflexively half-expecting to be shut down. “Like wood, and cement, and…making things. It’s nice. And so were all the flowers out front.”

The area immediately outside the front doors of the store had been the gardening department, a meandering tarmac walkway through shocks of bright and sweet-smelling flowers in every color, crowding the ground and wooden tabletops.

“They were,” Shigeru agrees. “The weather’s finally gotten so warm, I’m sure they’re thriving.” A pause. “We could have a look, if you like, after this. Remember I mentioned I wanted to find something to plant at the base of the tree in the front garden?”

Takashi chews his lip, doesn’t answer. Shigeru has an _it’s alright, we can leave_ on the tip of his tongue, and really, that’d probably be best, he’s honestly not sure he could run into Akimoto again on the way out  without doing something rash anyhow.

But then Takashi says, “Irises would look nice.” His grin is tremulous but real. And Shigeru thinks, suddenly, of a little candle, stuttering and blinking in and out against rough winds, but stubbornly alight despite it all.

Shigeru returns the grin, broadly. “So they would.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The haunted well is creepy as shit, for the record. 
> 
> Come yell at me on tumblr, @owletstarlet--


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They don't know the half of blasphemy, where you're concerned." For taizi, from their excellent Final Fantasy XV AU.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A gift-fic for taizi! I'm so enamored of their final fantasy xv au, so I wrote a continuation of this: (taizi.tumblr.com/post/182726512999/owletstarlet-replied-to-your-post-im-like-rly). You should give that a read first, as well as this one (taizi.tumblr.com/post/185408859834/prompt-natsume-being-protective-ofworried), but essentially Tanuma and Natsume respectively are in the roles of Prince and Oracle, and that in tai's oneshot Tanuma discovered that in the absence of any available potions he's able to use his magic to heal injuries directly. Which, of course, he discovered after Natsume had gotten a nasty head injury. I wanted to write something soft set in the aftermath of that, and I'm generally fascinated by how these very different characters would take on the roles and situations in ffxv-- Tanuma forced to be a leader, and Natsume refusing to give in to the bullshit whims of fate (and in a position where he really has nothing to fear from speaking his mind and being the sassmaster that we all know he truly is).

Kaname has no idea where they are. He didn’t think to ask. A field, a haven’s edge at twilight, backed up against a stand of dark trees. Four hours’ drive from yesterday’s dive motel, and that’s the extent of his knowledge. He really ought to have asked.

They should have stayed longer than a single night in that motel. Takashi should have, at least. But their funds were too sparse; after replenishing their groceries and curatives and taking Takashi to a clinic when his headache wouldn’t go away, the money just wasn’t there. And they hadn’t been able to say no to today’s hunt, for that very reason. Or tomorrow’s.

Takashi didn’t come along, today. He hadn’t done anything, he’d stayed at the haven with Ponta and the reluctant promise to stay in the tent and rest. But with the sunlight hurting his eyes and his hands shaking if he so much as held a coffee cup, he’d had little choice. They’d warned him at the clinic that he probably couldn’t expect be fully back on his feet for the rest of the week, at least, and Kaname knows Takashi’s chafing at being left behind, but he also knows better than to become a liability to everyone in the field by pushing himself when he doesn’t have to (a fact which Tooru had, rather bluntly, reiterated to everyone last night at dinner).

But Takashi’s with him now, curled up on his side under a light blanket with a napping Ponta nestled against his chest, his head resting in Kaname’s lap. Kaname’s idly carding through his hair with one hand, careful to avoid the half-healed concussion above his temple. His other hand’s wrapped around an energy drink, willing his magic to imbue it even as his focus slips from the fatigue of the day.

“Shouldn’t you rest?” comes Takashi’s voice, then, slurred and sleepy.

When the magic does slip away, then, he lets it, giving this particular attempt up as a lost cause. “I will,” he says, leaning down to kiss the crown of Takashi’s head. “Soon.” He sets down the can with a sigh, and gives Ponta a scratch behind the ears. “I’d hoped to make a couple more before tomorrow.”

Things had gotten complicated, and exhausting, on today’s hunt. What they’d thought to be a coeurl or two picking off some livestock had turned into _several_ , and not only are they far from certain they’d gotten them all, but they have yet to rule out that there’s anything daemonic at play. But for all that they came back sore and dead on their feet smelling of singed hair and ozone, at least they’d been paid on the spot already for each confirmed kill, and let Atsushi drag them back through the nearest proper town for supplies. And they might be fine on curatives  _now_ , but Kaname wants them to be better than fine, while Takashi is still in no state to heal anyone directly.

Whatever it was Kaname had done to Takashi a few days prior can’t be relied on, either. Not yet. Least of all because Kaname had slept for fourteen hours straight afterwards, and he can’t afford that sort of depletion in a longer fight. And then there was Ponta’s comment, only half-kidding, that Kaname had been lucky that his magic hadn’t boiled Takashi’s brain in his skull then and there. And that frankly scares the hell out of him, but if it’s a skill that could save ( _has_ saved) someone he loves, he’ll hone it. It’s Takashi he’ll have to practice on, with magic of his own that could mitigate whatever damage Kaname might inadvertently cause, until he can get it right, without fail.

“You don’t have to wait out here for me,” Kaname tells him, now. “That can’t be comfortable, lying on stone.”

Takashi taps Kaname’s knee with a lazy finger. “ _This_ is comfortable.” A yawn. “Anyways, ‘s okay. I spent the day in the tent so it’s nice here.”

It _is_ nice, air breezy and thrumming with crickets’ song, the trees before them not really thick enough to even be called a patch of woods but just sufficient to shield them from the exposure of the vacant scrublands beyond. At their backs is the glow of the fire, the murmur of their friends’ conversation.  

“Are you feeling better, though?” Kaname skims his thumb in the gentlest of circles across Takashi’s lower temple. “You took some painkillers, right?”

“Mm. Atsushi brought me some with the soup. Just felt bad I couldn’t go sit with everybody for dinner.”

“No one minds. You know that no one minds.” Another kiss, lost in Takashi’s hair. Even the firelight still hurts Takashi’s eyes, and he can’t sit upright in a camper chair for long. Of course, Satoru immediately proposed to forego the fire and keep Takashi company in the tent, but he didn’t really have the energy for that, either, and frankly, after the day they’d all had, energy was at a premium anyhow. From behind them the sound of Atsushi and Satoru’s usual current of bickering is far more muted tonight, and he can’t even hear Tooru.

Kaname doesn’t point out that he’s not exactly sitting with them, either: even on the best of days, ancient and intricate magics are difficult to persuade, and having an audience only makes it that much more difficult. Not in battle, thank Six, not when there’s no time for anything but to _act_ , but it’s when he’s sitting still that his own mind gets the chance to start working against him—for this very reason he’d spent years of his childhood convinced he could call upon no kind of power whatsoever. And at the moment, honestly, he’s not sure if it’s quite helping having the Oracle and a lesser god right beside him to witness it, even if they are both nodding off.

Takashi uncurls his arm from around Ponta and reaches for Kaname’s hand, his palm cool against Kaname’s own, skin still prickling from the aborted spell.

“How was today?” Takashi murmurs. He starts to lace their fingers together, though it takes him a few extra seconds to locate the dexterity to do it properly. “Everyone looked alright coming back.”

“Ah, yeah. For the most part. Satoru needed a potion for some burns, but he was alright after. He’s pretty upset about his favorite shirt being ruined, though.”

A pause. Then, “That purple one?”

“Mhm. Atsushi said it’s not really salvageable either, so. He’s been pretty vocal about what a travesty that is, so I’m sure you’ll hear about it.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” There’s a smile in his voice. “I’m glad he’s okay, though,” he adds, softer.

“Me too. It wasn’t…it wasn’t really life-threatening, I don’t think, but it looked pretty painful. Atsushi made him take a potion; he didn’t really want to.”

At that, Takashi turns his head just enough to meet Kaname’s eyes. “Why didn’t he want to?” he asks, slowly.

Kaname chews on his lip a bit, glancing behind them to where Satoru is currently chattering away. Though admittedly more subdued than normal, his eyes are still overly bright for someone who’s had the kind of day Kaname knows he’s had, as he flashes Atsushi something on his phone screen. “He’s…I don’t know, I think he sort of felt weird and bad about being the only one of us who wound up hurt today. He framed the whole thing like a joke but he did apologize to everyone. Tooru told him that it’s pretty much luck of the draw who gets hurt most days, and to quit being stupid.”

Takashi’s eyes go stormy as he looks back towards the camp. “I could’ve told him that,” he mutters.

Kaname nods. “Maybe you should. I told him not to worry about it, but I’m not really so good with this kind of thing, so. I’m sure he’ll hear it from Atushi but it’d mean a lot to hear it from you…and, um.” His teeth worry at his lip further, as he weighs just how much of this is actually his place to be speculating about behind Satoru’s back. He lets out a breath. “I think…he had some kind of misplaced guilt, over having a potion when he was hurt, when three days ago _you_ were hurt and you didn’t have one and then you almost—um. Anyways. I just don’t want him thinking he ought to hide it from anyone if he gets injured.”

“Tooru’s right,” Takashi says, lowly. He looks _mad_ , now. “He is being stupid. That’s what curatives are _for._ ”

“I know.”

“I’ll talk to him.” A promise, or a threat.

“Good. But wait until you’re up to it, okay?” He hadn’t intended to get Takashi agitated over this, not when he can still barely make it out of the tent under his own power. And Kaname’s got some supposedly misplaced guilt of his own, over that; his own healing had only done half the job, and by the time they could get their hands on any curatives, the window of time for them to actually do him any good had passed.

Takashi’s mouth twists, but he nods, giving one last long look in Satoru’s direction before his eyes slip closed, brow pinched, and Kaname thinks he must be hurting again. “You’ve still got enough potions, though?” he asks.

“Yeah. We were fine this morning and we only just used the one.” He nods towards the cans beside him. “Just wanted to prepare a couple extras but we’re still okay in any case. We’ll keep an eye on Satoru for you. Atsushi definitely will.”

“Thank you.” He cracks an eye open. “And look after yourself, too, please.”

“Of course.” They lapse into silence for a moment, and Kaname finds his own eyelids growing heavier, with the sweet warmth of the air and the hum of insects and the gentle rise and fall of Takashi’s chest where Kaname’s palm now rests against his shirt. But he’s vaguely aware that his own back’s going to bother him all night and probably into the day tomorrow if he stays out here on the stone for too much longer. “You were alright today?” he asks Takashi.

“Mhm,” comes the hazy response.  “Slept. Wanted to go rinse off in that stream near here…Sensei wouldn’t let me leave the haven, though.”

“I’ll help you tomorrow. We could all use it, probably.”

“‘Kay. Oh, ah. And Sensei read to me, a bit. He got ahold of a newspaper. Said I’d think it was interesting.”

Kaname feels a familiar twinge of apprehension at that. “Was it?”

“Ah, well—“ he begins, then sighs. “It wasn’t anything important. Well, nothing important that we haven’t already heard about. But, er. It’s an Accordan publication, and there was this editorial that mentioned me.”

Ponta snorts, then, from his place still half-squashed against Takashi’s chest, but he doesn’t open his eyes. Takashi levels him a tired glare.

“What’d it say?”

“Nothing really consequential. Just. I don’t think that I ever mentioned that when the engagement got announced, they’d invited a pretty prominent Altissian fashion designer to Tenebrae to come make my outfit. I didn’t really have any opinions about it one way or the other, so Shuuichi did all the talking and decision-making because it was all a PR matter anyhow. I guess even though we were both rightly worried that the whole wedding was a farce anyways, he at least realized the importance of keeping up appearances at the time. Anyhow, the plan was for the outfit to be on public display in Altissia before the ceremony, starting this week, but…”

“…but then you stepped down and I became a fugitive,” Kaname supplies.

Takashi smiles ruefully. “Right. So the whole editorial was just a collection of varying opinions about what ought to be done with the outfit now.”

“My personal favorite was the one saying they ought to burn the thing, because even keeping it out of sight would be blasphemous,” Sensei drawls, interjecting at last, and Kaname winces. Takashi had been more than prepared to be branded a heretic for his choice, and while they hadn’t been advertising his identity during their travels  any more than Kaname’s, he was still healing people whenever he was able, so the rumors inevitably swirled in his wake. It was equal parts alarming and infuriating to hear that vitriol coming from far-reaching news outlets, even from an occupied territory. And it certainly hadn’t been the first time, when pushing propaganda against a wayward Oracle was low-hanging fruit for the enemy.

“Anyhow,” Ponta continues, breezily, “they don’t know the half of _blasphemy_ where _you’re_ concerned. That Shuuichi brat might be a conniving, two-faced pain in my rear but at the very least he’s kept you thus far from shooting your mouth off at any elder gods and getting gobbled up for it.”

For that, Kaname has to say his gratitude towards Takashi’s brother is nigh overwhelming—everything about Shuuichi has always rubbed him the wrong way, but all it had taken, apparently, was a single cursory look at the prophecy for him to know the kind of danger Takashi was in. Shuuichi had been present when Kaname and Takashi had reunited; Shuuichi had been the one to recite to Kaname the entirety of the prophecy when Takashi couldn’t bring himself to continue after the first line or so. And, as he had explained to Kaname once some of the initial shock of learning of his own foretold divinely-ordained death had passed, it was apparent that Takashi wasn’t meant to survive the fulfillment of his own calling, either. Kaname hasn’t the slightest idea how Shuuichi has successfully managed to force any of the Six to acknowledge him for his bloodline, when he never Ascended and possesses no healing abilities. But after watching Shuuichi and Takashi work in tandem, and the incredible physical strain it caused them both each time, it’s clear that had it been Takashi alone, the sheer otherworldly force of each Awakening flowing through him would have eroded his body in no time at all.

“You haven’t heard from him recently, have you?” Kaname asks. They’ve only Awoken two so far; it’s very difficult for Shuuichi to be able to get away long enough to meet up with them when he’s busy trying to sabotage an entire military from the inside out, and each time speed and secrecy have been paramount. For now, it’s just as well; Takashi needs the time to recover.

“No, but when we do, I for one vote Altissia next,” Ponta says, closing his eyes once more. “You can go try your luck with wrathful sea monsters. I’ll be sampling the fried eel dishes. And the wine.”

“Mm…we should go to Accordo,” Takashi says, scratching lightly behind Ponta’s ears. “When this is all over, I mean. Outside Altissia, one of the smaller seaside towns…”

Kaname feels himself grin. _When all this is over_ is such a distant, if not unfathomable notion, but damn if he’s not hanging onto it with everything he’s got every single day. “A vacation?” he asks.

A firm nod. “A proper vacation. For all of us.” His free hand comes to rest on Kaname’s, where it rests over Takashi’s heart. “We’ll rent a cottage. I’ve always wanted to paint the ocean. And there’s all sorts of fish that you’ve never even seen before.”

Ponta scoffs. “Sounds more like a honeymoon.”

Takashi flicks him in the ear, but doesn’t deign to respond.

“Oh?” Kaname asks. Then, feeling a bit brave, he adds, “In that case, you’re not invited.”

Ponta’s eyes flash. “I could eat you, you know.”

Takashi flicks him again, much harder. “Insolence,” Ponta grumbles. “ _Any_ how. You could just take that whole wedding rags problem right out of the Altissians’ hands by taking them back when you get there. They’re yours, after all. You may as well just wear them when you go tell off the Hydrean, bring your blasphemy full circle.”

“I’ll pass,” Takashi says, dryly, then winces; his head’s definitely hurting him now. Kaname brings his fingers back up to Takashi’s forehead, gently traces and smooths the furrows there under his fingertips. “Not…really interested in wearing something someone else told me to, even if the wedding’s off.” His lips are pressed tight with pain, but his eyes are alight, and fierce. “We’re not doing anything on _any_ one else’s terms. Ever again.”

“No,” Kaname agrees, leaning in to kiss Takashi’s forehead, just over the crease between his eyes. His own chest is tight, he hasn’t the faintest idea how far the lunacy of acting on their own terms against the gods themselves is going to take them, but there’s nothing for it than to find out, together. And he won’t let them take Takashi, not without a reckoning. “Time for bed, alright?” he murmurs, against Takashi’s skin. “I’ll bring you some tea.”

Takashi’s fingers hook themselves into the front of his shirt, yanking Kaname down and closing the distance between their lips. “With lemon, please,” he murmurs, and Kaname can feel his smile.

“Sure.”

A whistle, then, from behind them. Kaname turns his head, Takashi still gripping his shirt, only to be met with the sight of Satoru cracking the very widest of grins.

“Having fun over there, guys—wha-ow!”

Tooru’s pen hits Satoru squarely between the eyes, and he flails. Kaname hadn’t even seen her throw it.

“Leave them be,” Atsushi says, peacefully, while Satoru rubs his face.

“ _Ow_ , geez. It’s just cute, is all,” he mumbles, looking utterly wounded as he fetches Tooru’s pen from the ground to place back into her outstretched palm. Wordlessly, she goes right back to her journaling, but Kaname can see the slight quirk of her lips.

“Come on.” Kaname dislodges Takashi’s fingers from his shirt, warm down to his bones. “Let’s get you to bed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come yell at me on tumblr @owletstarlet!


End file.
